It's been unclear to me whether the recently announced policy represents a change. Weren't there pro-life Democratic candidates before now?
There have been lots of good articles lately (NYT and New Yorker at least) about the complex horrors of foster care that I could eventually muster into a post if people want that. I hear the new religious allowances in the Texas system are already wreaking havoc.
The Texas foster care system is so fucking depressing. They keep getting ordered by judges to repair and fund it, and they just...don't. Instead they pass religious litmus tests to weed out teh gay.
Thorn, I'd enjoy reading your thoughts.
I'd also be interested in Thorn's view.
Conversations about Democratic Party priorities often suffer from people's inability to grasp any kind of political complexity. Of course you're going to have the occasional anti-abortion rights Democrat and of course people are absolutely right to complain about that and of course it is sometimes a no-brainer to vote for that person anyway.
Once you accept the obvious, there are interesting, difficult conversations to be had about what role such people should play in the party, and how the party overall should treat them. But you never get there, because people have a hard time grasping the obvious.
It seems to me that you can divide pro-life people, and politicians, into two categories: (a) personally opposed to terminating pregnancies and wouldn't do it (or counsel it) and (b) want to change the laws so that no one can terminate pregnancies. Obviously, plenty of people in (b) are in (a) as well. But what's striking is that there are plenty of people in (a) but not (b) and the polling and self-identifying as pro-life frequently confuses them, counting a's as if they were b's.
In the Democratic Party today, (b) is a total non-starter. Total.
We want the votes of people in (a) but not (b), and have to message in a way that let's them think we don't hate them.
The contrast between 5.2 and 6.2 is interesting to me. IMO, nearly all of the supposed pro-life Dems in political life today fit into my category (a) but not (b). Pf, can you think of anyone who's out and proud with (b) right now?
6: "safe, legal and rare" was supposed to be a way of doing that, but it just got Clinton hit from both sides.
I think the message should be something like, "I am pro-life but support funding for PP clinics. Women need access to family planning." All of the political battles are being fought over access, which is a clear thing that an (a) person can support.
I mean access to birth control, cancer screenings, etc. Fully Hyde Amendment territory.
5.2 seems about right to me. I don't know useful ways to think about party dynamics though, especially since Citizens United. The cynical thesis: everything of consequence happens behind closed doors and possibly for consideration. The scripts for the front stage of soundbite politics and postures is basically determined there. I would prefer to also have a realistic antithesis, but I do not know where to find that.
Separately, I also would be interested in hearing what Thorn thinks. I would be interested in the essay reading Crimnally Bulgur suggested also.
Separately separately, Thorn is a hero, both for a sustainedly compassionate and reasonable perspective here and also for parenting in what she's elsewhere said are circumstances that would have long ago hit the red zone for many lesser beings.
It's always been important for the b's that the a's feel compelled to throw in with them. Maybe impelled is the better word.
6.b To say something that I'm sure you know better than me--
Politicians can say one thing and do another. "Of course I don't want to restrict access in general, but this particular bill's fine print is not too bad."
HGs 9 would cover it, if funding votes were clear-cut and couldn't be weakened in a thousand sneaky hard to follow ways.
The (b)s are hiding the fact that they also want to end access to birth control. The (a)s are all in favor of birth control. If you want to cleave the two groups, focus on birth control access.
The (a)s think abortion will never happen to them (until it does) or they excuse that one time they did it, or they actually kept the pregnancy when push comes to shove. Birth control is super different because it's not hypothetical and rationalizable - the (a)s use birth control today in real time, and they depend on it heavily to ward off the abortion angst.
I assumed for years that everything happened behind closed doors, but I feel like the last year has proven that to be an illusion.
7: Yeah, that's an interesting contrast, and I think heebie gestures in the direction of my response. I have the luxury of living in the People's Republic of Maryland, so I don't worry too much about abortion politics and don't have ready examples of extreme Dem views, but there plenty of Dems out there who will endorse waiting periods and parental notification and the like. These folks' views often edge into territory that I think can be reasonably characterized as opposition to abortion rights -- they're de facto in category (b).
I am really confused by the current iteration of this issue, for pretty much Charley's reasons -- I'm not sure if anyone's talking about (a)s, who I have no problem with, or (b)s.
15. For democrats? My view: Rs had/have extreme tension between batshit statements that played well on Fox and any visible action with consequences. Invisible/incomprehensible action is OK for a minority party, but not for one in power.
The a's are what I meant in 1 when I asked weren't there already pro-life Democrats.
TBH, I would trade universal healthcare with no abortion coverage for what we currently have. Obviously that's not ideal, but I feel like if health care costs were way down, than 1) the cost of abortion would not be as onerous and 2) private funds could be pretty easily raised to cover costs for low income women.* If we need pro life Democrats to make that happen, it's a trade off I would be willing to make now.
I'm mainly struggling with why it's such a cultural lightning rod issue in the US. I don't know if evangelicals have ever not been pro life, but I know the turn to rabid anti-abortion sentiment was only in the 1970s. In Western Europe, abortion is technically legally more restricted but much more available because cultural attitudes are different. I'd rather abortion on demand technically be illegal or very restricted but practically easy to access and destigmatized than technically legal but practically impossible. I'm just not sure how we can get there, culturally. It seems like fighting the legal battle is an obvious front, but not one that's working super well in Red States.
*PP already does this, to a large extent.
20: My pet theory is that religious conservatives subconsciously recognize that they have adopted a philosophy of extreme selfishness and subservience to temporal power, and abortion is a convenient issue where they can claim to be compassionate and to be standing up for the weak.
20.2: The standard story I've heard is that white evangelicals (especially the Southern Baptists) needed a new moral crusade after they took the wrong side in what turned out to be one of the biggest moral issues of the era (segregation and civil rights), and abortion is what they picked.
I suppose it's probably a bit more complicated than that.
I don't know if evangelicals have ever not been pro life, but I know the turn to rabid anti-abortion sentiment was only in the 1970s.
It's always been about women being punished for their sluttiness. Before birth control was widely available, abortions were shameful and that was part of the punishment, and since morality seemed nice and simple, evangelicals could think more clearly about medical situations.
Birth control allowed slutty sluts to start slutting without consequences. Evangelicals actually like the slutting quite a lot, but it drives them crazy not to have consequences. THOSE ARE GOD'S FUCKING CONSEQUENCES. Literally. Sinning + consequences = 4-evah!
However, abortion is much ickier than birth control. They don't actually find birth control very icky. So here they can channel all the icky medical gooeyness into their slutty consequence equation and it just blossoms.
That plus 22. Icky perfect storm.
I wonder if instilling the fear in the young uns and God's consequences and all that doesn't actually heighten the sex appeal of the slutty slutsters for evangelical. If they partly see abortion rights as a major boner-killer, because the threat of an unwanted pregnancy and the fall from grace is part of the transgressive attraction to the slut.
"I don't know if evangelicals have ever not been pro life, but I know the turn to rabid anti-abortion sentiment was only in the 1970s."
Back in the early 70s the SBC passed a resolution affirming that abortion should be legal to protect the mother.
It's hard to speak of evangelicals in general, but historically a lot of them were cautiously supportive of abortion in some cases. Additionally at the time the idea that 'life begins at conception' was a fairly fringe one - though possibly much more common in RC circles.
Nosy, here -- what you're saying about evangelical motivations for opposition to abortion sounds perfectly plausible, but these are people I really don't know and don't get. Are you getting this from national media, or personal contact with people?
Yeah, I don't know what's got it going again but I've been seeing some of this on twitter lately and I don't understand it.
Litmus tests are for people who don't actually care about winning and when I see these liberals on twitter hollering about selling out women, I feel like their notion of what selling people out means needs some expanding.
I want Democrats elected to protect women's rights, of course, but more importantly, I want Republicans *not* elected because they destroy everything good, and, and oppose science and compassion and human happiness and epistemology, and given the chance will drive us to extinction. Letting a Republican win over an anti-choice Democrat is still selling out women b/c when the Republicans burn the whole fucking planet down the women burn with it.
So if voting for an anti-choice Democrat is what it takes to make Republicans a minority in congress, then fuck yes I'll do it and I don't care if they're an 'a' or a 'b', as long as protecting choice is on the Dems' platform.
I used to have this same argument with my fellow gays who refused to vote for a dem who didn't support equal marriage. Nothing about letting Republicans get/stay in office was ever going to help gay marriage happen faster. If it's a safe Dem seat, then sure, primary them with someone better. But don't let a Republican have it.
Yeah, there's also a category (c) which is people who don't want to pay for abortions. It includes basically all the b's, some of the a's, and some people who don't actually care about abortion, but hate paying for anything that might benefit minority women and the poor, and are happy to make common cause with the pro-lifers where they can.
So the challenge is to wedge away folks in (a) but not (b) or (c).
27
The son of the pastor of our (Lutheran) church married an evangelical Christian. The marriage was a failure and the divorce was even worse--she accused him of being a Satan worshipper and a pedophile because he was comfortable being naked and took baths with their then 2 year-old son. After the mother of all custody fights, they had joint custody until the son was about 11-12, when she got knocked up from a one night stand and decided now that she had a second she didn't really need to parent her first kid. The consensus among the elderly church ladies was the sexual hypocrisy and moral double standards were par for the course with fundamentalists.
Not from national media, but not exactly from personal contact - it's not like anyone has confessed this exact set of views unabashedly to me. I'd say I'm inferring based on a large base of second-hand evidence. For example, friends' comments about their parents or their hometowns. Offhand comments that evangelical/conservatives make in polite company. What students say in that "everybody knows" tone.
Probably my best evidence is a boyfriend I had in my early 20s who was probably pretty close to this, but I didn't have the wherewithal to pin him down exactly, so I'm extrapolating after the fact. But we were together for almost two years, so there's lots to go on. Through him I met my best friend, who grew up in the same small town, and then flipped progressive in college. She is quite explicit about what people her hometown and her extended family believe, and describes this sort of thing very clearly. So I am very confident that this describes life in that one specific tiny town north of Dallas, and then I'm generalizing geographically with a lot of less explicit evidence.
28 It's nothing like what you see in the press -- both mainstream but more the conservative type -- but our coalition does include some folks who are drunk on identity politics.*
The kernel of validity to that approach is that neither money nor attention are infinite, and so channeling both towards candidates who need more of both, and away from candidates who do not share one's core values, is almost defensible. I say almost, because I think the backlash from this stuff is always worse, in a Streisand rule kind of way, than maybe a positive spin on the favored candidate would be.
* I'm sponsoring a proposed change to the state party rules at the convention tomorrow that evokes this kind of thing. I should totally have had you people vet (and improve) the language.
It's hard to speak of evangelicals in general, but historically a lot of them were cautiously supportive of abortion in some cases. Additionally at the time the idea that 'life begins at conception' was a fairly fringe one - though possibly much more common in RC circles.
Back when I was into Jesus I knew a lot of Southern Baptists who certainly abortion was a sin, but were definitely not for legal prohibition, especially when they were thinking about how it might mean fewer brown/poor babies or about how opposing abortion put them on the same side of an argument as Catholics.
In fact I think this was pretty much the feeling of all the SBs I knew, I can't remember any hardcore anti-choice people from that crowd.
I think we've talked about it here before, but I think another reason lots of evangelicals are pro life but anti mother is that they're upset at the collapse of the healthy white infant adoption market. I haven't had anyone lay it out extremely explicitly, but I've heard a lot of lamenting about the difficulty of adopting an infant, combined with nostalgia for the days when any married couple that wanted a healthy infant could get one.* I think it also makes sense with why they want abortion to be impossible but also want to make it harder to raise a kid as a single mother.
(In fairness, I do have pro life evangelical relatives who are gung ho about adoption in general and more than happy to adopt non-white infants with health problems. These relatives tend to support social services though and absolutely despise Trump.)
*The white bit is usually implied and not stated.
Here's a good short history of the roots of evangelical opposition to abortion.
I seem to recall that Amanda Marcotte back in the Jurassic era of blogging, described the attitude in 25 as widespread among the evangelicals she grew up with. So there's another data point for you.
how opposing abortion put them on the same side of an argument as Catholics.
I have wondered whether the decline in anti-Catholic bigotry played into the rise of evangelical opposition to abortion.
25/37
I guess it's a similar reason why people are addicted to having affairs. Risky sexy sex.
Just to clarify: my evidence in 31 supports my claim in 23. I am not talking from experience in 25 about abortion rights being boner-killers, just speculating.
31: Oh, I'd call that personal contact. It's just funny, it's the kind of thing that I'll listen to, but that I don't have any kind of direct knowledge to back up myself other than national media.
I have definitely been guilty of thinking of explicit tactical assessments of what is and is not possible as equivalent to an active attempt by the likes of Schumer/Emanuel to self-negotiate and define down what is possible, but it's not. Even hardcore Bernieites do it implicitly; not explicitly.
But even given that complex tactical world there is still a political value to articulating principles and being clearly on a certain side. (I'm not sure these tactical assessments really belong in speeches made in public, in particular; they should be easy to deflect.) Some issues are big enough that the "big tent" concept alienates more people than it gains; core supporters and organizers see themselves treated as a captive audience. Plus if we keep treating core goals as secondary to assembling a winning coalition, what will that coalition actually be able to do when it wins? (See AHCA, but also EFCA.)
So I'm conflicted.
And definitely 6. In April the kerfuffle was about Bernie Sanders supporting a pro-life Democrat for mayor of Omaha, but on research this guy seems to have been an (a), or at least made pledges like one for this race. (He lost.) Then this week it's about Dem leaders not refusing to exclude pro-life candidates, and everything I've googled on the subject is very unhelpful on whether they make the a-b distinction.
Yeah, I suspect a lot of this current fuss as being ginned-up conflict, where the actual 'pro-life' candidates are pretty unobjectionable in context.
And I really think the way to handle it is on a case-by-case basis. The party's position is and should remain pro-choice. Any given local candidate, it's worth looking at them, looking at the alternatives, and seeing what's the least worst option. For me, I'd be unhappy seeing the Democratic party supporting a pro-life -- in the 'actively supporting measures to ban abortion or severely restrict abortion access' sense -- candidate even if the alternative were letting a Republican run unopposed in general, but I'd still want to look at the specific situation.
11.3: Thanks. That means a lot in a week where I'm hearing from a former HS classmate that she want to beat up Mara's dad for shit I'm sure he did to a long-ago ex who died this week plus Selah's family being fb-open about their grief and loss and love on her birthday plus a real fear Nia is telling the truth that her mom is pregnant and hoping I'll parent for her again. So yeah, when I feel like a glum loser because I'm not doing all the cool things you other parents do, there are some reasons. (But I'm feeling mostly human after yesterday's second surgery in two weeks, so that part is good and should get better!)
On that note, my mom took me for my uterine ablation yesterday despite her opposition to birth control and she seemed pretty positive about it, though she must not have understood my whole explanation since the doctor gave her information that surprised her. (He fat-shamed me again a bit before I went in, saying it's lucky I couldn't eat after the tonsillectomy because lots of ice cream has bad effects even if I don't have a weight problem now and that he hopes that latter part is true for Selah, who gets the procedure next week. At least I'm done with him after my post-op checkup.)
I agree that 35 is interesting, but I am also skeptical that it is true.
For congressional elections, I am a single-issue voter. You must answer "yes" to this question: "Will you caucus with the Democrats?"
The rest is negotiable, and dependent on circumstances.
35 strikes me as the sort of thing that would be very prevalent in the over-50 set of evangelicals. Tutting about their daughters' infertility and upset about their friend's asian granddaughter, and feeling like Others are infiltrating White families with a big helping of Fox.
As in, those who already raised their kids when things were Diff'rent. It's not something I've ever heard from people who are themselves in the age-range of parents.
35 is super true. Kathryn Joyce is the journalist to follow on the adoption corruption beat and her book is thorough and good. I could talk to this more if you have questions about what seems implausible, Swope.
And I agree with I think Mossy that foster care topics probably fit well with the suggested article reading group. I have complicated feelings about being a paid parent and I'm curious how that connects to what's proposed in the article.
Someone in a prior thread linked an article and suggested it should be posted as a reading group? I wasn't paying attention and didn't follow up, because I'm like that lately. But you could!
From Thorn's link:
To tens of millions of evangelicals, adoption has become a new front in the culture wars: a test of "pro-life" bonafides, a way to reinvent compassionate conservatism on the global stage, and a means to fulfill the "Great Commission" mandate that Christians evangelize the nations. Influential leaders fervently promote a new "orphan theology," urging followers to adopt en masse, with little thought for the families these "orphans" may actually have.
I can testify AND witness to this. I just haven't had anyone acknowledge a white-adoption angle, and that is believable to me in the over-50 set more readily than the under-50 set.
It doesn't exist yet but it will! Criminally Bulgur proposed it here.
The (b)s are hiding the fact that they also want to end access to birth control.
All of them? It may vary from country to country but I've met quite a lot of people (mainly older men) who buy the story that a foetus is a separate individual with equal rights, but are perfectly fine with contraception. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a considerable constituency.
The part that seems implausible to me basically comes down to "lots of." I am sure there are people who feel this way but even if every evangelical who wants a white baby and can't get one AND all their closest friends who sympathise with them feel that way, it still seems like a limited enough number of people holding this view to be a big factor in why abortion is the issue for the right that it is (which I know is not exactly what Buttercup was saying). Having extra white babies on hand when somebody wants one may be a nice bonus for the anti-choice crowd, but I can't believe it drives the issue in any significant way.
Also, I am definitely not reading that book b/c just the blurb made me angry. Religious loonies ruin everything. That Republicans haven't already gotten to.
The part that seems implausible to me basically comes down to "lots of." I am sure there are people who feel this way but even if every evangelical who wants a white baby and can't get one AND all their closest friends who sympathise with them feel that way, it still seems like a limited enough number of people holding this view to be a big factor in why abortion is the issue for the right that it is (which I know is not exactly what Buttercup was saying). Having extra white babies on hand when somebody wants one may be a nice bonus for the anti-choice crowd, but I can't believe it drives the issue in any significant way.
Also, I am definitely not reading that book b/c just the blurb made me angry. Religious loonies ruin everything. That Republicans haven't already gotten to.
55: thanks! I'll post something.
57: Sure, fair. I think it's one factor but not a huge one, in part because of the simultaneous save-the-brown-heathens push. But there is an explicit push in the anti-abortion movement to try to convince women to carry pregnancies to term and place desirable babies for adoption. The Right-to-Life DC march a couple years back actually used the coercive "Birthmother = Good Mother" texts that are distributed through crisis pregnancy centers and the like as its public statement.
See!? Religious loonies made me double-post.
All of them? It may vary from country to country but I've met quite a lot of people (mainly older men) who buy the story that a foetus is a separate individual with equal rights, but are perfectly fine with contraception. I'd be surprised if this wasn't a considerable constituency.
Yeah, I'm probably being too glib. I still think it's a good cleave-point though, to reveal the true colors of those that are anti-birth control.
Certainly conservative churches promote no sex till marriage, and I think everybody in conservative circles has agreed not to openly discuss birth control after you're married, but everyone uses it. For those who are in group (b) partly out of a desire to police others, policing pre-marital sex and thus birth control before marriage is a good fit.
I think it's where evangelical Christianity meets white nationalism. That's not fair to all or maybe even a majority* of pro adoption pro life people, like my family who is more than happy to adopt and marry non white people (Christian = brothers/sisters in Christ, etc.) But there's definitely a fear of white people getting "outbred,"** and white women aborting babies is a boogeyman. I think there's also the fear that white sluts raise slutty unchristian babies, so they should be raised by good wholesome women.
When I was in high school I was invited to speak on a panel with a famous conservative talk radio host, and he spent the whole evening complaining about the "cost" of adopting a white infant.
*dunno if I'm this charitable.
**I've heard this line a surprising number of times from people I thought would know better. Something about the way I look seems to encourage people to divulge racist opinions.
I can't believe you just called them sluts.
Oh yeah, white babies definitely cost the most to adopt. Agencies claim that's the real cost and they just subsidize all the way down to black boys, the cheapest, but everyone knows the truth. (Not every agency does this but it's still widespread.)
That's not to let foster care adoption off the hook. In many states including mine, race is a factor in labeling a child special needs/hard to place, which means qualifying for a post-adoption subsidy and tax break for the adopting parents.
HEALTHY WHITE BABY? FIVE YEARS? WHAT ELSE YA GOT?
Possibly on topic: The Kids Boop version of Cake by the Ocean is creepy.
it still seems like a limited enough number of people holding this view to be a big factor in why abortion is the issue for the right that it is
No, but they could make up a big part of the activists that raise issues up, picket, etc.
I feel like I know things relevant to this, but I was away from a computer most of the day. Also, I'm not good at being relevant.
71: if there's a stench coming from the bleeding it probably means the procedure was done wrong and you should look for a different way to excise pro-life democrats from the party.